


Healers Are the Worst Patients

by MadameFluffnStuff



Series: The Cuddling Hour Is Upon Us--ficlets from tumblr [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Failedmissionimpossible!Katara, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Nottakinganyshit!Aang, Sick!Katara, Sickfic, protective!Aang, sneakies gonna sneak, sweeties gonna sweet, will add more tags tonight when i finish screaming what is left of my soul into the void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:49:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27147608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameFluffnStuff/pseuds/MadameFluffnStuff
Summary: Katara is a warrior who has trained for years in the art of stealth.Katara is also sick.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara (Avatar)
Series: The Cuddling Hour Is Upon Us--ficlets from tumblr [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981606
Comments: 1
Kudos: 39





	Healers Are the Worst Patients

**Author's Note:**

> (from tumblr) @thecaroliner's ask for the hurt/comfort dialogue challenge:
> 
> Kataang + #5: "You're burning up." (+ Katara has a fever)

Katara glanced twice around the corner, but there wasn't a sign or shadow of anyone down the hall. A warrior’s instinct had her take a deep breath as she shifted into stealth, but the tickle in her chest flapped in her lungs like a ribbon beaten by the winds of a cold fall day.

She coughed. The sound echoed.

She pressed herself against the wall and checked around the corner again.

Katara would have laughed if it wouldn't have blown her cover. She kept flush against the wall, even sticking herself to the blue paint to camouflage her dress. She turned the last corner that would lead her to the door—

A wall in orange and yellow robes greeted her, instead.

“ _*ahem*_ ”

Katara shrunk into a shell that wasn’t there. Her voice was heavy iron dragged over concrete, and it puttered like it was about to die. “Ehehehe...Hey, sweetie…”

Aang’s frown, much like a solar eclipse, was rare and hard to look at, and it disabled Katara just as easily as Yue did any firebender. His eyes were unamused and looked down at her through half-lids.

She smiled at him.

He crossed his arms.

“And where, exactly, do you think you’re going?”

“Oh, I was just...I was just looking for you.” Katara laughed through another cough and tried not to make it _too_ obvious that she was reaching her energy to the nearest source of water, probing the room for even a trace of her element. There was none. She should have known. Aang had taken every precaution.

“Oh, _really_?”

Katara was a terrible liar and was even worse at trying to hide that she knew it. “Yeah, I was just...um...Aang, listen, I know you’re worried, but I’m not dying or anything—”

“ _Katara…_ ”

“—and I was only—Oh, _come on_ , Aang!”

Aang turned her around and marched her back to their room. Katara tried to peel his hands off her shoulders while she dug in her heels, but Aang, without stopping, earthbended the ground beneath her into a magic carpet that made her slide as if she were on wheels.

She crossed her arms and fouled the temple with a rainbow of words that would have Toph wiping a prideful tear from her eye.

The small kiss on her head was a smack of tape trying to weld the broken seal of a gushing fire hydrant, and Katara’s simmering blood rolled into a boil.

Too soon he had her in their room. She briefly tried to hold the doorframe, but Aang scooped her up, making her world spin, and had her tucked into bed before she could calibrate which way was up.

Her head pounded, but her headache sat on a stool mere inches from the head of the bed and looked down at her like he was trying to pin her in place with his eyes.

Katara tried to get up and tear out of her fuzzy cocoon.

Aang put one finger to her forehead and pushed her back down.

Katara’s glare was as hot as she felt and would have melted him if he was a steel bar.

She tried again. He stopped her again. And they looped over and over.

“Aang—”

“Nope.”

“But—”

“Not-ugh.”

“I only—”

“Not happening.”

“Would you just—!”

He put his finger to her lips this time.

“ _No._ ”

His face was right over hers, and he drowned her in his eyes and in the promise that they held.

He kissed her forehead—checking her temperature. She felt his frown deepen before he pulled away.

“Aang, really, I’m _fine._ ”

Aang’s voice was pillow-soft, and his hand petting her hair was just as gentle. “You’re burning up, Katara...”

Katara coughed and couldn’t stop for several minutes. Aang’s heart broke, but he caught enough of the pieces to hold himself together and help her sit up as her pain passed.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, really.”

Aang looked away when he spoke. “I will always worry about you...”

Katara wanted nothing more in that moment than to test her flexibility to kick herself in her own ass. The mask Aang wore was laced with a dozen cracks and chipped tiny glimpses of how worried he really was, and the force of his emotion hit her like a sledgehammer and nearly sent her into another fit.

She rubbed his arm and smiled. He looked at her and struggled to do the same.

“It’s not your fault. It’s just a cough.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“Nonono, of course not. We were both being a little stupid.”

Aang paused. He looked at her seriously, and his voice was even softer than before. “You are not stupid, Katara.”

Even _more_ heat flooded up Katara’s neck and into her face, and the hidden healer at the back of her mind was briefly worried about her passing out.

She didn’t, but she seriously teetered the line, especially when Aang kissed her cheeks and between her eyes.

He looked at her and whispered a gentle ‘ _I love you_ ’ without using his voice or making a sound.

Katara looked at him and tried to say the same. He smiled. Of course he heard her. He knew her better than anyone.

She kissed the three points of his arrow and scooted over in their bed, feeling more than a little guilty for untucking the meticulous cocoon of blankets. Aang accepted her invitation to lie beside her before she could even ask.

She was tugged to him like a magnet to metal, and she didn’t realize how tensed he was until he relaxed. He shared his winds with her and turned himself into a body of frosted warmth. She didn’t realize how hotly she was burning until he doused her fire.

Katara dug herself deeper into him, burrowing herself away from all else, and a warrior’s instinct had her breathe deep, inhaling worn leather and all things fresh and free, as she settled into a stealth that hid her, in his arms, from even the tickle in her chest.


End file.
